Senior bureaucrat Kathryn Campbell suspended without pay

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Senior bureaucrat Kathryn Campbell is the first to pay the price over the unlawful Robodebt scheme, two weeks after the Robodebt royal commission handed down its damning findings.

Transcript

00:00 Well, Catherine Campbell, who oversaw the rollout of the unlawful Robodebt scheme, has

00:06 been suspended from her $900,000 a year defence job.

00:10 Now she was the former head of the Department of Human Services during Robodebt's inception

00:15 back in 2014.

00:16 She also then led the Department of Social Services between 2017 and 2021.

00:23 As you said, she's the first senior person to pay a price after those damning findings

00:28 were handed down.

00:29 The report was very scathing in its criticism of Ms Campbell's handling of the scheme.

00:34 It said that she'd been responsible for a department that had established, implemented

00:38 and maintained an unlawful program.

00:41 It found that she did nothing of substance when exposed to information that revealed

00:46 the illegality of the program and that she gave misleading advice to Federal Cabinet

00:51 about the policy proposal.

00:53 The commission also found that she'd instructed staff to cease processing a request for legal

00:58 advice sought by the Ombudsman because she was motivated by a concern that the unlawfulness

01:04 of the scheme might be exposed during their investigations.

01:08 It said that she did nothing because she knew that Scott Morrison wanted to pursue the proposal

01:14 and that the government could not achieve the savings that it had promised without that

01:18 program.

01:19 Now, Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister, was asked on ABC Sydney this morning to confirm

01:24 the news.

01:25 He did confirm it.

01:27 He said that failings with bureaucracy and human tragedy caused by the scheme meant that

01:32 action needed to be taken.

01:33 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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